Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Hyphenated name

April, 2014

Our son Liam, 15, has a jersey he wears over his jacket to
play pond hockey in the winter. On the back is spelled out “Scobacheck,” a nod
to his hyphenated last name of Scobey-Polacheck. More than 20 years ago, before
Liam was even a twinkle in our eyes, his dad and I got engaged and decided that
when we married, we would both hyphenate our names and so would any children
who might come our way. Our decision, made by a couple of 23-year-old
idealists, was made with both intention and reflection, but without detailed
thought to practical issues, such as the fact that a hyphenated name would be
too long to fit on the back of a sports jersey.

At the time
of our marriage, I could not imagine changing my name to Polacheck. I loved the
name Scobey. Something about the two syllables, the “b” in the middle and “y”
at the end made it feel bouncy. Bubbly. Boppy. Happy. “Scobey” was fun, while
“Polacheck” was more serious. Eastern Europe is not known for its zippy,
easy-going last names.

Unlike some
couples who each retained their own names, Bill and I, both English majors with
an affinity for the meaning inherent in word choice, thought a hyphenated name
best represented what we wanted our marriage to be about—the joining of two
lives.

One of the
most immediate gifts that hyphenation offered was experiencing the grace with
which Bill’s parents accepted a decision that they didn’t agree with. The day
after we announced that we would hyphenate, Bill’s mother called to tell him
that she and his father thought this was not a good idea. Bill thanked her for
the call, explained some of our reasons and said we were going to go forward anyway.
His parents never brought it up again. In the 20 years that would follow, every
letter, card and thank-you note they sent was addressed to us using our
hyphenated name. Bill’s parents could have written “Mr. and Mrs. Bill Polacheck”
to make a point, but they chose instead to honor our decision, and in doing so,
they gave us confidence that they trusted us to do what was best for our
relationship and our family, even if it would be a different choice than they
would make for themselves.

Bill and I
believed that if were going to be successful at having a long and unwieldy last
name, we’d need to retain both flexibility and a sense of humor. It didn’t help
that I have a double first name. “Your name is Annemarie Scobey-Polacheck?” I
remember a dad of one of my children’s friends saying, upon our introduction.
“Are you sure that’s just one person?”Bill pointed out that my name had the same number of syllables as John
Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.

When we
named our sons, we purposefully chose short, easy first names and skipped a
middle name, knowing they could add a middle name at Confirmation if they
chose. Our biggest complication came upon the adoption of nine-year-old
Teenasia. Teenasia was a difficult first name (her name pronounced ten-asia,
rather than teen-asia, as it is spelled). Bill and I stayed up late in the
weeks leading to her adoption, wondering if we should take the moment of her adoption
to legally change everyone’s name to Polacheck. Finally, we had our friends,
Cliff and Machellé Brown, over for dinner and asked them what they thought. We
thought the Browns, an African American family who had chosen uncomplicated
first names for their own four children, would be able to advise us on whether
it would be unfair to give Teenasia such a unusual last name on top of her
difficult first name. They were incredulous.

“What?”
Cliff said, putting down his fork. “You are the Scobey-Polachecks. That’s who
you are. That’s who Teenasia will be. She’ll handle it. It will be fine.”

Teenasia
herself declared her commitment to the name by proudly writing it in bubble
letters on her school folders once she was adopted. She has since stated, amid
Jacob’s discussion of dropping a name, that she plans to be hyphenated forever.

Twenty years
after our decision to hyphenate, I still have mixed feelings about it.
Sometimes, when I tell a new person my last name, I apologetically add, “It
seemed like a good idea at the time. We were very young when we got
married.”But overall, I have felt that
our name suits us so well — it’s complicated, yet balanced — our very own
brand. Hyphenation is our imperfect solution to a difficult question of
identity, custom and why the male’s family name trumps. Each of our children
will need to take their name into adulthood and make their own choices going
forward. And like Bill’s parents before us, Bill and I will trust our children
to follow their hearts as they make their decisions. And that’s a family
tradition we’re proud to carry on.

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.